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The third technical component of our new campus delivery service involves integrating this service into our discovery layer. This turned out to be fairly easy to implement. Working with EBSCO, I was able to add a link “Request Item from the Library” that takes users directly to our interlibrary loan login (we use ILLiad).

When users login, they are taken to a pre-filled request form. Open url standards allow information such as title, author, date, and ISxN to transfer between the two systems. In addition, to this basic information, the “Cited In” field is filled in with “EBSCO: (catalog reference within EDS).” I used this information to set up a routing rule so that all requests originated from EDS go directly into “Awaiting Request Processing” in Document Delivery. Because we have a Direct Request rule that automatically processes requests with ISBN’s, I made the EDS Doc Del rule the first routing rule. See below for all the gory details.

Did you know that you can’t just delete records from your ILS if you are using a discovery system? I didn’t. In fact, the only reason I knew that deleting records was a potential concern was a comment made in passing by a library technology person over a year ago. Even though this person came from a library that uses Voyager and Summon, I tucked this tidbit away.

Now that I am preparing our catalog questionnaire for EBSCO’s EDS and getting ready to request a data extract of our catalog for indexing, this tidbit has been bugging me. It took several investigations on both EBSCO’s and SUNY OLIS’s support sites to discover the truth about deleted records. We can delete items and holdings with no repercussion, but the bibliographic record is another story. In our case, we need to add an STA field that says “WITHDRAWN.” Then, after the catalog is indexed (once a week), we can run a report to delete these records in batches. Conveniently, we can also get a report of OCLC numbers so we can also delete our holdings from OCLC in one sitting.

So in essence, these changes have meant a complete change in workflow, a temporary pause in withdrawing items, and documented procedures for withdrawing items. And all thanks to a passing comment.